The Gentle Art of Murder

by Jeanne M. Dams

  ‘You’re still to be pampered. I’ll do it. Darjeeling or Earl Grey?’

  Earl Grey seemed just the ticket, fragrant and not as assertive as Darjeeling. A good brew for a recovering invalid.

  ‘Well!’ Gilly gave me my mug and sat down with hers. ‘Do you remember I was going to see what I could do to track down those missing credentials?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘You were pretty vague about everything for a while there, you know. We were all worried about you.’

  ‘I wasn’t really sitting up and taking notice, was I? I don’t remember ever feeling quite so awful, except maybe fifty years ago and more, when I had my tonsils out. But go on. The credentials.’

  ‘Yes. Well, the more I thought about it, the more I thought I could pin down the disappearance to one or two people. If Horrible Will was blackmailing Chandler because of something in his past, and there was some incriminating evidence in those papers, then either Will took them for safe keeping, in case he needed to carry out his threats of exposure, or Chandler took them himself to checkmate Will.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable.’ I sipped my tea.

  ‘So I checked Braithwaite’s office first, and then his studio. The only interesting thing I found was—’ she reached into her pocket –‘ta-da!’ She pulled out a passport and tossed it on the table.

  It was the standard burgundy-coloured booklet with the gold coat of arms, looking well-used. I frowned.

  ‘Open it.’

  I opened it, glanced at it, and then took a closer look. ‘But … but …’ What was John Chandler’s passport doing in Will Braithwaite’s possession?

  ‘I thought you’d be interested. It was in Will’s studio, under a stack of canvases. Hidden away, I’d say.’

  I looked at it more closely. ‘You know, if Braithwaite were a little fatter, and had grey hair, he’d look quite a lot like Chandler.’

  ‘Mmm. I suppose so. But though this is interesting, it isn’t the most important thing I found. Not in Will’s territory, but Chandler’s. I suppose I should have left them where I found them, but I brought them home just in case. Too many weird things have been happening at the college.’

  ‘Gilly, I’m not strong enough yet to cope with suspense. What did you find?’

  ‘The missing files. All of them. Tucked away behind old exam papers in Chandler’s filing cabinets.’

  ‘But they would just be the paper originals of the data on the central computers, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Not quite. You see, Chandler’s were faked.’

  ‘What do you mean, faked? Things were erased, or something?’

  ‘Dorothy, when I was an undergraduate, I worked in the records office for a while. I didn’t actually need the money, but I didn’t want to sponge off my parents for life’s little pleasures. They were paying out so much for my education, you see. So I did filing. As boring as a job could be, basically, but I handled hundreds of transcripts from all over the country. All over the world, for that matter. We had students from everywhere, lots from the United States. I know what a transcript from an American university looks like. Chandler’s file had what purported to be a transcript from the University of Dartmouth, taking a Master’s degree with high honours in architecture. It was no such thing. It was faked.’

  ‘And you can prove this?’

  ‘Easily. It wasn’t even well done. He’d used the right sort of font, and the layout was more or less right, but he’d done it on A4 paper. They don’t use A4 in America. And the paper was white, with no background colour, and there was no university seal embossed into the paper – oh, dozens of little things.’

  ‘So that’s the hold Braithwaite had over him. He never got the degree he was claiming.’

  ‘Not just that. I don’t think anything else in his file was genuine either, the letters of recommendation, any of it.’

  ‘What about that architecture award he was so proud of?’

  ‘That wasn’t in his file. The certificate hangs on his office wall, and I have to say it looked real enough. If an expert took it out of the frame, they could probably tell for sure.’

  ‘I think I’d like to have that done. Gilly, have you told Alan all this?’

  ‘Not yet. He was so worried about you. I thought he didn’t need anything else to bother about.’

  ‘That was kind of you, but now I think he’d better be told, just as soon as he gets back from church. The police can check the authenticity of Chandler’s background a great deal more efficiently than we can, and plainly it needs to be checked. And as soon as Braithwaite can be questioned, he has a few things to talk about.’

  When Alan did come home, he brought with him the dean of the Cathedral and his wife. Kenneth and Margaret have been our close friends for years, but they’re usually far too busy on a Sunday to visit. Jane was with them too, carrying something that smelled very appetizing.

  Kenneth came up and took my hands. ‘I’m happy to hear you’re feeling better, Dorothy. We haven’t time to stay, but I’ve brought you Holy Communion.’

  The others retired to the kitchen to leave us to private worship. When I had received the Sacrament, with gratitude to the dean, he inquired searchingly after my health.

  ‘Really, I’m over the worst of it. Still a little shaky, but I’ve eaten almost nothing for a week, and had no exercise at all. But I’m almost well, and eager to get into the swim of things again.’

  Margaret came into the room. ‘Mind you don’t dive too far into the deep end, then. You know you have a tendency to get in over your head sometimes. Kenneth, we really must go. Dorothy, I’ll pop in tomorrow to see how you’re getting along.’

  Jane had brought a cottage pie for our lunch; that was the source of the lovely smells from the kitchen. ‘Easy on your throat,’ she said gruffly, warding off thanks. She’d used hamburger instead of her usual small chunks of beef or lamb, and it did go down smoothly with a small glass of wine. Gilly stayed to eat with us; then she was off with Alan to do her casting, and I went up for a nap. I was on the mend, but I wasn’t well yet. With two cats on one side of me and Watson on the other, I drifted into the best sleep I’d had in a week.

  And woke with the best idea I’d had in a month.

  Getting out of bed was the usual extrication process, the animals being disinclined to move. Suddenly, though, ears pricked up. They heard Alan doing something in the kitchen. They all jumped off the bed to go down and investigate, and I was freed.

  ‘I’m glad you came down,’ he said. ‘I was just about to go and pick up Gilly, and I didn’t want to leave without telling you.’

  ‘What’s it like outside?’ The sun was low, but the sky was clear and I could see no evidence of wind.

  ‘It’s been a lovely day, a real St Luke’s summer day. Warm, almost no breeze.’

  ‘Then I’m coming with you. I’ve had a really terrific idea, I think, and I want to try it out on you.’

  ‘Sure you’re up to it?’

  ‘Sure.’ I gave him a quick kiss. ‘I’ll just put on a hat.’

  Alan brought the car around and tucked me in as tenderly as if I’d been at death’s door. I rather enjoyed the cosseting. Tomorrow I would probably be back to my normal independent, rather bristly self, but for now I could revel in being treated like glass.

  ‘So.’ He turned into the High Street. ‘What is this splendid idea of yours?’

  ‘I haven’t worked it all out yet, but the skeleton’s there. Did Gilly show you all she’d found?’

  ‘Yes, before lunch, while you were with the dean. I must say I’m not terribly surprised. I knew there must be something incriminating in those documents, or they wouldn’t have gone missing.’

  ‘Yes, of course, and that will all have to be checked, find out what Chandler’s real background is. But what about the passport?’

  ‘That, I confess, has me baffled. It’s all of a piece, though, with the confusion about Chandler being in Greece at the same time, apparently, that he was being
murdered here. I haven’t been able to work that out. One of the few things we know for certain is that Chandler did go to Greece just after the end of term.’

  ‘No.’ I probably looked like a cat with cream. ‘What we know, in fact, is that someone flew to Athens on Chandler’s ticket. Someone presented Chandler’s passport to the Greek authorities.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Alan thought about that for the length of the High Street. ‘You’re saying,’ he said finally, ‘that it wasn’t Chandler. Someone else travelled on his passport.’

  ‘Did you take a good look at his passport picture?’

  ‘No. I checked it for the Greek stamp. Which was there, of course.’

  ‘Yes. It would have to be. The thing is, I did look closely at the picture. For a moment I couldn’t think who it reminded me of. You remember, I’ve never seen Chandler alive. But then I thought, dye the hair back to brown, take off a few pounds, and …’

  ‘Braithwaite!’ He thumped his hand on the steering wheel. ‘By heaven, Braithwaite! He could have done it. Powder in his hair—’

  ‘How about white paint? He’d have easy access to that. His colouring is the same other than the hair; even the eye colour is right. He could stoop a little to add age, wear some of Chandler’s clothes – at least, the man lived alone, didn’t he?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Well, then.’ I was about to launch into a narrative when we arrived at the college. Alan pulled up to a double yellow line and got out, leaving the car running. ‘Move it if you have to,’ he instructed, ‘but I should be right back. I want to hear the rest of this story!’

  I kept a sharp and nervous eye out for traffic wardens, but Alan and Gilly appeared in a trice (whatever that is). ‘Alan tells me you’ve figured the whole thing out!’ she said as she jumped in the back.

  ‘Not the whole thing. But I do believe I’ve come up with the solution to the big problem of Chandler being in two places, indeed two countries, at the same time. Listen to this and see if I’ve made some stupid mistake.’

  I paused. ‘All right. I’m Braithwaite. Chandler is lying dead at my feet.’

  ‘How did he die?’ asked Gilly.

  ‘And why was his body—?’ That was from Alan.

  ‘I’ll get to how in a minute, but I only have a glimmer of why – why everything. Stop interrupting, both of you. He’s dead. I’m delighted, of course, but all the same I can see that I suddenly have a big problem on my hands. Here we are, just the two of us, alone in the college. What if he told anyone that he was meeting me? What if someone saw one or both of us arrive? Not that anyone knows I would have any reason to want him out of the way, but all the same …

  ‘He was about to leave the country, I think. No one will miss him for ages. If I can get the body out of the way, no one will know until it’s far too late to connect me with him in any way at all. Trouble is, a body isn’t an easy thing to dispose of. Chandler’s about my height, but he weighs more than I do, and I’m out of shape.

  ‘The holidays have begun and the college is deserted. That buys me some time. I think of various ways to get rid of the body, but the only thing that seems feasible is to tip him down the elevator shaft. We’re in the photo studio. That’s where he found me and did – whatever he did that made me so furious. That’s where he had his stroke, and I seized my opportunity. He didn’t die at once, so I gave him some highly poisonous developer, and that apparently finished him off. They’ll find that poison in his system and trace it to Sam. Good! I’ve never cared for Sam. But then it occurs to me that I hate the rest of the staff, too. Why not scatter lots of red herrings around? I leave him in the photo studio for the moment and go down first to the print studio, where I pick up a small print to put in his pocket. Oh, I am so clever! Then one more floor down to the sculpture studio, with all those nice sharp tools around. I choose a hefty chisel and a thinner one, take them upstairs, and drive the hefty one into his back.

  ‘Now I’m ready. I’ve been careful, of course, to touch nothing with my bare hands. I take the thin chisel, force the shaft doors open (first having sent the elevator to the top floor), and push him down. He lands on his face, the chisel showing nicely.

  ‘That’s that. No one will find him for ages, so I have time to cover my tracks. I can go to Paris on the next plane. My wife is away. She can’t tell the police where I have been or when I left town. And then I come up with my brilliant plan. Chandler was going to Greece. I run all the way down to his office and rummage through his drawers. There is his ticket, or the computer printout that serves to get me on board, and there is his passport. I’m much better looking than he is, of course, but I can look enough like him to pass, especially with Greece in such a muddle and idiots probably manning passport control. He’s leaving in a few hours. He’s probably already packed.

  ‘I run back upstairs to my studio and artistically streak some white paint through my hair. Watercolour, so I won’t have a dreadful time getting it out again. I go to his flat, use the key I found in his pocket to let myself in, and Bob’s your uncle. There’s his suitcase, all ready to go. I make sure I also have my own passport, go to my own house and put on a couple of clean shirts and an extra pair of underwear under my clothes, to make me look fatter. Then I get myself to Heathrow.

  ‘On the way, I have time to think out what to do next. I’ve travelled all over Europe, of course, and I know the ropes. The easiest thing will be simply to come back to England, as myself. So I get to Athens, I go through passport control, as Chandler, and then I go to a washroom, get the grey out of my hair, throw away my extra clothes, or buy a small carry-on to put them in, and go back in and hop on a plane to Heathrow, travelling this time as William Braithwaite.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said Alan, who had been following along closely. ‘Not if you’re as smart as you think you are.’ He brought the car to a stop in front of our garage. ‘Pour me a drink, you two, and I’ll finish your story for you.’

  We were more than ready when he came in and sat down. ‘Now. In the last instalment, Braithwaite had just left the airport as Chandler. He stops somewhere and turns into Braithwaite again. And then … he goes directly to the railway station.’

  ‘The railway station?’ I said.

  ‘Aha! For once I’m ahead of you. Did you know that it’s possible to go by train from Athens to London, all the way? It’s a slow and rather tedious journey, much of it through the Balkans.’

  ‘The old Orient Express!’

  ‘Over some of the same track, indeed, though probably much less luxurious. I think that’s what Braithwaite would have done. The great advantage, for someone wanting to leave as few tracks as possible, is that train travel is far less regulated than air travel. An airline keeps flight manifests, checks passengers in, pretty well knows who’s on every plane. To catch a train, one buys a ticket and climbs aboard. No booking ahead, unless to assure a berth; the journey takes two or three days. And to make things even better for a shy traveller, the route goes through several countries, some of them with fairly unstable governments that are none too friendly with Great Britain. Enquiries can be made, of course, will be made, and we’ll check Braithwaite’s passport, but there may well be gaps in the sequence.’

  ‘And probably nobody would check his passport to see that he wasn’t officially in Greece at all. Alan, I do think that’s what happened, don’t you? That’s how the other boarding pass, the return from Athens to London, ended up back at the college. Braithwaite forgot to throw it away and somehow dropped it in the studio. But why would he go through all that elaborate charade?’

  ‘We won’t know that for certain until he’s well enough to be questioned.’

  ‘Oh, yes, how’s he doing?’

  ‘Greatly improved,’ said Alan. I saw Gilly make a face and then quickly suppress it. ‘He’ll be out of hospital in the next day or two, and we – that is, Derek and co. – will be very eager to talk to him about a good many things. His wife, incidentally, is making li
fe unpleasant for the police, the college authorities, the hospital, in fact anyone she can think of. They’ve had to bar her from the hospital, she was making such a fuss. Now she’s threatened them with a lawsuit.’

  ‘Delightful lady. I suppose she’s worried that her meal ticket might be in danger.’

  ‘As it certainly is. Braithwaite’s facing a number of charges, and I doubt he’ll earn much in prison.’

  Days passed. September drifted into October, the lovely weather continuing. Braithwaite made slow progress toward recovery, while I kept on wondering why he had wanted Chandler dead. Perhaps Chandler had refused to pay up any longer. Had he decided to brazen out the claim of falsified credentials, thinking that Braithwaite couldn’t prove his allegations without the carefully hidden documents? That was foolish, if so. A few phone calls to the relevant institutions in the States would have confirmed that Chandler never spent time there, or at least was never granted degrees. Even then, Chandler could have trumped him with the Marlowe Award. That was the significant credential, compared to which all the others paled.

  Derek phoned Alan the day after Braithwaite was released from the hospital. Alan replied in monosyllables, ended the call, and then asked me, ‘How would you like to come with me to the college? Derek is going over to talk to Wicked Will, and I thought you might like to sit in. He says he has a surprise to spring, and it could be interesting. It’s not an official interview, or you couldn’t come. He agreed, since you’ve been involved from the start, that you could be there if you stayed in the background.’

  I gladly abandoned my book. It was one of my favourite Agatha Christies, but I’d read it so often I knew not only the ending, but virtually every word of dialogue along the way.

  Derek picked us up. His driver used an unmarked car, not a panda car, but it could still be parked anywhere without reprisal. Somewhat to my surprise, another car followed, also discreet, but containing uniformed officers. ‘Are they expecting trouble, then?’ I whispered to Alan, who shrugged. Irritating man!

  St Luke’s summer had abruptly ended the night before. As November lurked just on the horizon, the weather had turned grey and chill. A treacherous wind blew the last leaves from the beech trees and tugged at my hat. I pulled it down more securely and shivered.